djpbaltimore wrote:The washpo article was dated 2 17 18. How could they report on something that did not exist until the 28th? This evidence is not very compelling.

Which evidence, WaPo or the corporate filing documents? Feeling like a mushroom are ya?

Hehehe... uh but this whole post is like the prelude to Sideshow Bob stepping right onto the rake. Or Wile E Coyote looking down and realizing that gravity will not be defeated.

Or something like that.

Last time, the atty probably doesn't present garbage to the court in a slightly obnoxious manner unless he's pretty confident his info is accurate.

That said, we shall see.

I think we are spending more time debating this than anywhere else on the web. Hence, I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that it is largely a trivial point. And I have fallen into the trap of arguing a totally insignificant point, which is my personal rake.

I do think Concord Catering existed prior to the election based on contemporary evidence. I can't access the link upthread about the business entity, but the indictment never suggests it was an LLC. I don't think Mueller's team is going to be stopped over technicalities as evidenced by the Manafort decision yesterday. That notion is wishful thinking IMO.

So anyways, Seattle City Counsel has essentially declared war on big employers. They have passed a "head" tax of $275 per year per employee for companies grossing over $20,000,000. That's Seattle's own Starbucks and Amazon among others. They will be taxed for at least 5-years (any bets on wheter the tax becomes perpetual??) to raise millions for the city to provide more low cost housing for the homeless crisis they have declared.

Company comments;

Starbucks spokesperson John Kelly..

“This City continues to spend without reforming and fail without accountability, while ignoring the plight of hundreds of children sleeping outside. If they cannot provide a warm meal and safe bed to a five year-old child, no one believes they will be able to make housing affordable or address opiate addiction,” Kelly said.

“This City pays more attention to the desires of the owners of illegally parked RVs than families seeking emergency shelter.”

Amazon VP Drew Herdener...

“We are disappointed by today’s City Council decision to introduce a tax on jobs”

“While we have resumed construction planning for Block 18, we remain very apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here.”

“The city does not have a revenue problem — it has a spending efficiency problem. We are highly uncertain whether the City Council’s anti-business positions or its spending inefficiency will change for the better,”

Think any big employers are doing anything except working on how to relocate from the city? Anybody think big employers are going to flock to Seattle? Me neither.

I'd have more empathy for the two brands... but left on left regulatory fights are kinda fun to watch.

Just imagine how many other businesses have closed because of Amazon. Businesses employing people who's job is to interact with other people within their own community, rather than wheeling a trolley round a workhouse deprived of natural light, with a device screeching at them if they aren't fast enough, fearful for their zero hour contract with no sick pay and no holidays.

But of course, Bezos is one of the richest men in the world, as befits somebody of such excellence and innovation, and it is the free market that has delivered this situation, so everything is ok.

macbindle wrote:Just imagine how many other businesses have closed because of Amazon. Businesses employing people who's job is to interact with other people within their own community, rather than wheeling a trolley round a workhouse deprived of natural light, with a device screeching at them if they aren't fast enough, fearful for their zero hour contract with no sick pay and no holidays.

But of course, Bezos is one of the richest men in the world, as befits somebody of such excellence and innovation, and it is the free market that has delivered this situation, so everything is ok.

Weird how the buggy whip companies crashed and burned after Henry Ford invented the assembly line. At least Bezos provides a service and some proprietary products. What does Zuckerberg provide?

Spare me the harsh working conditions nonsense. Of the 40,000+ emploees in Seattle proper not a single one is driving a forklift.

Last edited by Scott SoCal on 16 May 2018 19:07, edited 1 time in total.

The Amazon jobs in Baltimore are all in the warehouse. And for better or worse, those jobs contribute to the decrease in black unemployment that Trump loves to talk about. Since the city doesn't have useful public transportation to the port of Baltimore, Amazon hires tour buses to transport their workers from the main metro train stop downtown to the warehouse. That speaks a lot to the quality of said jobs.

...read with great deal of interest the few last posts concerning a big business LOCAL role and their business decisions in response to the local authorities decisions.

before i chip in the substance, it may help to to understand my position if i summarize our locally bound personal situation. me and my wife grew up in and hale from where most observers would call a nordic variety of a socialist society. we live in the us for a while and own an apartment in the heart of manhattan. the best i know there are no blacks nor any other neighbors (besides us) who speak english with any non-american accent. moreover, english is not used in this household even when our kids are home. that said, our kids americanism was the reason we decided to stay in the us for a foreseeable future.

that out out of the way, i'm going to relate my personal experiences (and only THAT) wrt to a corporation mentioned - amazon - and add to the mix another corporation i'm a tad more familiar with both locally and more - the IKEA.

lets start with the amazon...until november last year i never bought anything on-line, amazan included. yep, that's how 'outdated' i was. then b/c of some Christmas gift desires for our special friends in europe i had to decide to wait for the item until after Christmas if ordered thru a conventional retailer or join the amazaon prime and get the very special item in 2 days. reluctantly, i ordered the item from amazaon and it was in my hands in less than 48 h. i was pleasantly surprised. the long story short, many more Christmas gifts and other items were ordered shortly after, some were sent back b/c we, not Amazon, changed our minds. in most case, not every case, the refund was issued BEFORE the item was RECEIVED by amazon. needless to mention i never paid a penny for sending back ANY item we decided to we did nor like. again, i could refer to several occasions of my small displeasure with the amazon services (the auto prime renewal etc). it took a brief call to the customer service to get everything fixed in the most polite, professional and satisfactory way.

amazon is the truly customer centrist company i ever dealt with. the words of a true skeptic until PROVEN otherwise. do i care how they treat some local govt after the experience i had ? sincerely: not really. b/c they are winning what an open market economy let them and spread it among the millions of consumers. call me an egotist. i could care less.

now to IKEA...that they opened an affordable, hugely popular store in the brooklyn red hook is minor. as many new yorkers now enjoyed, we value the main spinoff in terms of the great city park they maintain and the free rides we enjoy every 2nd weekend when deciding to just hang out in the red hook artisan joints or an occasional priced at 1/3 (compared to manhattan) drink in a red hook bar..

i more than welcome such corporate suffering ...

DJPbaltimore:'John Kerry is an honorable person and would not call out the Russians if there was not evidence', 'the 2 of you are russia stooges'in foreign policy there are no eternal friendships or eternal enemies, only eternal interests

It is strange that I am agreeing more and more with Python this week. I do all my shopping with prime due to their free shipping. The one black mark on Amazon customer service is that sometimes people have issues with the third party vendors they house on their site. The story below was in my newsfeed this morning. But despite frequenting their services, I think their extortion racket over HQ2 is pretty disgusting and the cities who have prostrated themselves for Amazon look craven.

djpbaltimore wrote:It is strange that I am agreeing more and more with Python this week. I do all my shopping with prime due to their free shipping. The one black mark on Amazon customer service is that sometimes people have issues with the third party vendors they house on their site. The story below was in my newsfeed this morning. But despite frequenting their services, I think their extortion racket over HQ2 is pretty disgusting and the cities who have prostrated themselves for Amazon look craven.

The opening ceremony for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem included a prayer led by Robert Jeffress, the Dallas pastor and Trump faith adviser who has spoken out against Islam and Mormonism, and infamously said that “you can’t be saved by being a Jew.” Did Trump use Jeffress’s invitation, and the rest of the ceremony, to send a message?

And

And so the ceremony included not only a prayer from Jeffress, whose disdain for Jews is matched only by his loathing of Mormons and Muslims, but a benediction from John Hagee, an Evangelical crackpot notorious for telling NPR’s “Fresh Air” that God created Katrina to punish New Orleans for hosting “a homosexual parade.”

The law enforcement source leaked financial reports, called “suspicious-activity reports (SARS),” stored in a government database chronicling Cohen’s financial activity because they were beginning to disappear. The official could no longer find two SARS filed on Cohen; much of what has been reported over the last week is derived from a SARS filed by First Republic Bank, where’s Cohen’s Essential Consultants had an account. The report referenced two previous SARS filed by the bank, which, according to the New Yorker’s source, were now missing from the financial database of suspicious transactions maintained by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN.

The financial warning signs were there and the suspicious-activity reports appeared to have done their job in flagging potentially illicit activity. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the world of white collar crime and intricate financial investigations; its proximity to the president, however, is unique. That proximity, it appears, prompted the whistleblower to act and disclose the remaining financial documents for fear that Cohen’s potential financial crimes were in the process of being scrubbed from the system, whitewashed from the record.

Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg (now under US sanctions) gave "donations" to Cohen and the Clintons.

"Are you going to believe me or what you see with your own eyes?"

“It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

Former Australian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Downer, broke with diplomatic protocol to take part in a highly-secretive interview with the FBI about Russian election meddling, according to new reports.

In a long piece detailing the early stages of the probe into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, the New York Times revealed that Downer was interviewed by two FBI agents in London just hours after the probe opened in August, 2016.

After deliberations between Canberra and Washington that the Times described as "tense", Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol to allow the ambassador to be interviewed.

Given that the FBI's nascent investigation was happening as the presidential campaign reached its pointy end, the Downer interview was considered so sensitive and possibly damaging to the Trump campaign that only five officials knew about it.

At that stage, the investigation was referred to by the code name Crossfire Hurricane.

"Are you going to believe me or what you see with your own eyes?"

“It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

Overnight, the US 10-year bond yield reached 3.096 per cent, its highest level since August 2008, just ahead of the global financial crisis and nearly 80 basis points higher than a year ago....If the trends of rising US rates continues, the US dollar will appreciate, currencies like the Australian dollar and euro will depreciate, global bond market yields will rise regardless of what other central banks do and stockmarkets whose valuations have been stretched to breaking point by the ever-intensifying post-crisis search for returns will be under real pressure.

It has taken us nearly a decade to get to the point where a real normalisation of the post-crisis settings is in sight, if not yet in place. Exactly what that might look like is anyone’s guess but, in a world with abnormal risk-taking baked in by the post-crisis incentives – a world awash with debt and inflated asset prices – normal may not be quite what you’d wish for.